php xpath on XML

Question

How can I achieve this:

<root>
<gallery name="First">
 <picture active="1" detail="not shown"/>
 <picture active="1" detail="not shown"/>
 <picture active="0" detail="not shown"/>
</gallery>
<gallery name="Second">
 <picture active="0" detail="not shown"/>
 <picture active="1" detail="SHOW THIS ONE"/>
 <picture active="1" detail="AND SHOW THIS ONE" />
</gallery>
</root>

I'm trying:

$myArray = $objXML->xpath('gallery[@name="Second"]/picture[@active=1]');

How can I change it to get the desired output? Thanks, Andy

why did you change from DOM in your last question to SimpleXml now? — Gordon
– Gordon, Commented Nov 19, 2010 at 13:10
I was using DOM for adding and deleting nodes because I'd read that it was much easier than with SimpleXML, I am using SimpleXML for displaying and editing the XML. — Andy
– Andy, Commented Nov 21, 2010 at 20:15

Gordon · Accepted Answer · 2010-11-19 13:29:15Z

4

Your XPath is wrong. Either use

/root/gallery[@name="Second"]/picture[@active=1]

to match this node constellation from the root node only or

//gallery[@name="Second"]/picture[@active=1]

to match this node constellation anywhere in the document (slower)

Full working examples:

$dom = new DOMDocument;
$dom->load('NewFile.xml'); // containing your XML
$xp = new DOMXPath($dom);
$pictures = $xp->query('/root/gallery[@name="Second"]/picture[@active=1]');
foreach ($pictures as $picture) {
    echo $dom->saveXml($picture), PHP_EOL;
}

gives

<picture active="1" detail="SHOW THIS ONE"/>
<picture active="1" detail="AND SHOW THIS ONE"/>

and

$sxe = new SimpleXMLElement('NewFile.xml', NULL, TRUE);
$pictures = $sxe->xpath('/root/gallery[@name="Second"]/picture[@active=1]');
foreach ($pictures as $picture) {
    echo $picture['detail'], PHP_EOL;
}

gives

SHOW THIS ONE 
AND SHOW THIS ONE

edited Nov 19, 2010 at 13:29

answered Nov 19, 2010 at 13:04

Gordon

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3 Comments

Andy Over a year ago

they don't work for me, are you allowed to query for more than one thing in xpath?

Gordon Over a year ago

@andy see update. "don't work for me" is not a proper error description. please clarify your issues with it.

Andy Over a year ago

I'm sorry, I didn't have time to properly check it on Friday. Now I've just had another look and realised I'd changed my XML file and that was why it wasn't working. The xpath stuff was fine all along!! Thanks for your help, Andy

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